


demons in my dreams

by ephemeralgrime



Category: Ghost (Sweden Band)
Genre: Group Sex, M/M, Multi, Slice of Life, Tenderness, Vignette, elaborate dick metaphors, the mortifying ordeal of the 'group sex' tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:33:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralgrime/pseuds/ephemeralgrime
Summary: They're as much his as he is theirs.An ode to Copia & his ghouls, told in vignettes.
Relationships: Aether | Quintessence Ghoul/Cardinal Copia, Cardinal Copia/Dewdrop Ghoul | Fire Ghoul, Cardinal Copia/Mountain | Earth Ghoul, Cardinal Copia/Multi Ghoul | Swiss Army Ghoul, Cardinal Copia/Rain | Water Ghoul, Copia/Rain/Mountain/Aether/Swiss/Dewdrop
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	demons in my dreams

**Author's Note:**

> copia/everyone fic, because sometimes you just gotta roll up your sleeves and be the fic you wanna see in the world.
> 
> only the boys, because:  
> 1) imo, copia is gay  
> 2) imo, the lady ghouls are gay  
> 3) imo, this was already unwieldy enough as is and I thought it would collapse under the weight of 2 extra platonic POVs. maybe they'll pop up in a ficlet later together!
> 
> shout out to @backwards_blackbird for the cheerleading and for calling this "ghoul sampling fic" because, well, yeah. <3 enjoy your snack platter, copia.

**Rain**

Copia worries about Rain.

All new ghouls are clumsy with their element on Earth. They rise from hell fumbling and uncertain, newborn again with their powers. It helps, Dewdrop had told him, to surround yourself in your element. Re-immerse yourself in your connection to the push and pull of the universe. Figure out the ways they work on Earth instead of hell. 

But life isn’t easy on Earth. For ghouls, everything feels...backwards. Difficult. 

“The others - they say it doesn’t get better,” Rain had told him once, gasping and miserable. He’d been lying in a heap on the dock when Copia found him - the result of an attempt to draw water out of the lake. It would be a parlor trick for the older ghouls, but Rain trembled where he lay, exhausted. 

He’d felt very small then as Copia lifted him from the dock and brushed debris from the lake from his hair. 

“They say you just have to keep trying,” he’d said with his mouth in a hard line while Copia eased him up, his damp skin soaking through Copia’s coat. “You just have to adapt. To Earth. To all of this.” 

Now, from the window near his desk in the library, Copia watches him again - a tall, slim figure standing alone at the edge of the dock. He knows he’s been practicing, and long weeks have passed since that awful day, but it’s still unnerving to see him where Copia remembers him crumpled and shivering.

The lake is a black circle in twilight, dark and unforgiving, its surface still as glass. Cooler summer nights have long since tipped into fall, and it’s starting to get cold in earnest. Even from where Copia’s sitting near the fire, he feels a chill from the windowpane.

Rain stands motionless at the dock, poised and graceful. The dark mouth of the lake sits before him in placid silence. Only his swishing tail betrays uncertainty. 

Copia sets his pen down.

Rain is slight, but Copia can see power and strength coiled tight in the muscles of his legs and his back where he stands, still and silent. Copia watches his head tip forward and his shoulders raise in a steadying breath, unmistakable even from a distance. Then, in a single elegant movement, he leaps from the dock and dives into the blackness of the lake. 

The surface breaks, splashes, then settles as Rain slips beneath it, lost to the cold depths of the water. Copia finds himself standing up, pressing his hand to the glass of the window, imagining that he was pressing it to the glassy surface of the water instead. 

Looking, waiting. Breathing.

Twenty seconds pass. Then another twenty, and then twenty more. Copia is holding his breath now, afraid that any breath he takes will mean another gone for Rain. His hands sweat in his gloves.

What was it like to be a water ghoul in hell? What could be so bad about Earth that it was worse than that?

Finally, Rain surfaces.

It’s not the choking, flailing desperation Copia feared. He rises slowly from the surface of the lake, and Copia can’t process what he’s seeing at first, but - he’s encased in a bubble of water. Perfectly circular, clear and bright and shining in the twilight. Copia can see even from a distance that there is triumph written on his face and in the graceful lines of his body. 

The bubble lifts from the lake, a perfect liquid sphere for just a moment. Suspended in the air, Rain arched and impeccable within it.

And then - and then, Copia sees it wobble, lose its form. The edges tremble and stutter before it bursts mid-air, spilling Rain onto the deck in an inelegant tumble.

Copia is running out the door to the courtyard before he realizes his feet are moving. 

“I saw,” Copia says, panting, when he finally reaches him. “I saw. _Magnificent._ " He sinks down, the knees of his slacks instantly soaked. He cups Rain’s face in his hands. He’s sopping wet and freezing, but that smile could burn the sun.

"C-colder than I thought," Rain laughs through chattering teeth as Copia yanks off his jacket and slides it around his slim shoulders, hauling him to his feet. 

"You just need warmer water." Copia says.

And after that, it just makes sense to bustle him back into the warmth of the abbey, leaving wet footprints everywhere, to _insist_ that he use the tub in Copia’s quarters because it's the biggest in the abbey. He gets it steaming hot and full to the brim, so full that water sloshes over the rim when Rain lowers himself in, groaning, stretching, happy.

Copia settles on the edge of the tub and watches as Rain lets his head fall back, laughing in disbelief at himself, his tail thumping the side in contentment. It’s the happiest Copia's seen him since he was summoned. 

Not everything about life on Earth has to be complicated, Copia thinks, and he smiles too.

And if Copia lingers there just to make sure he's comfortable, and if Rain's warm, damp fingers start fingering the skin above Copia's collar when he leans in to smooth back his hair - well. 

Maybe it doesn't get easier, but there are moments like this. Good ones - simple ones - where there’s only happiness and the thrill of possibility stretched in front of you. 

Copia kisses Rain and worries about nothing at all.

**Mountain**

In the winter, Copia visits the greenhouse.

The abbey is badly heated and always drafty, and it’s hard to resist the greenhouse’s cheerful glow as he patrols the grounds. It’s a bright square of green warmth among the snow and the cold, like a lighthouse in a landscape of ice. To visit - to feel the heavy slide of the door as it opens, feel the _woosh_ of hot wet air greet him - feels like its own private ritual.

Mountain stands in the center of it all, the living world unfurling around him. Always barefoot, often wrist-deep in soil, his rolled sleeves stained green and brown with growing things. 

In the humid warmth, Mountain shows him huge plants with dark, waxy leaves, longer and wider than his arm - so dark they look black. Copia examines creeping vines heavy with blooms, ferns overflowing out of their pots, orchids and fruit trees and things he doesn't recognize. The smell of _life,_ of heat and entropy and sun, is like a living thing itself, settling over Copia in a heavy warm haze. 

The responsibilities of the abbey are a distant thing when he’s here with Mountain.

Mountain lets Copia explore the crops, too. Sweet peas and cucumbers, cauliflowers and the hothouse tomatoes as big as his fist that they pack up tight and send to the kitchen staff. The stuff of life from a tiny, warm heartbeat. 

“It’s so green.” Copia marvels, rubbing a soft frond in between his gloved fingers. Delicate velvety fuzz lingers there, and he thinks of all of the fineries of the abbey - the wood carved to look like vines, the intricate floral patterns on the china, the heavy velvet of his curtains - all manufactured to look like _this,_ things that Earth offers naturally and easily.

Spending so much time surrounded by death, you lose sight of the wonder of life. 

Later, when the icy grip of winter is just barely starting to fade into the pale green of spring, Mountain lets him see the herbs used for tinctures and potions - delicate and strange plants, grown under a lamp that glows blue and otherworldly. 

“Beautiful,” Copia breathes, leaning over, inhaling the living scent of it all. He feels Mountain gently take his hands from where they grip the edge of the wooden planter. Large, calloused hands - so much larger and rougher than his own, hands that have spent millennia nurturing hardy things and coaxing magic from the earth - carefully slide off the fine leather of his gloves and set them on the edge of the pot. 

He feels curiously exposed.

“Feel this," he says, placing Copia’s hands at the base of the plant before them. The soil is warm and damp, but the waxy base of the plant is strangely cool and firm. 

To his right, Mountain flicks his wrist and does a complicated little movement with his hand. The thick stem swells and stretches suddenly, growing up and out. The soil shifts to accommodate it, and Copia feels it beneath his hands - roots, magic, life. Something undeniable and powerful. 

A delicate red flower, strange and complex, unfurls at the plant's crest.

Mountain is behind him now, bracketing him with the broad warmth of his chest, sliding his hands around Copia’s. Nested parentheses, warm and alive, or maybe the curve of a question mark.

Warm breath ghosts in the crook of his neck. The gentle press of lips, just barely a kiss, on the curve of his throat. Copia smiles, leaning back into the solid heat of Mountain’s chest, a silent yes. 

Under Mountain’s hands, he comes to life too. 

**Aether**

The infirmary is Copia’s favorite place in the abbey. The path there is well-worn and familiar, promising relief and quiet solitude. It’s on the third floor with huge tudor windows overlooking the forest to the east, and if you’re there early enough in the morning - like Copia often is with his migraines, as regular as clockwork - you can watch the morning fog resolve into clear, cold sunlight. Copia likes to imagine himself there in the sun, the pane of glass gone, changing from mist into something substantial and bright. 

But this morning, the pounding in his head made his vision go unfocused and blurry, pulsing unpleasantly in time with the beat of his heart. He could barely sit upright in bed without his stomach lurching. He’d renounced the ritual of his walk to the infirmary, drawn the curtains tight, and asked Aether to come to him. 

Aether is a good healer, powerful and gentle. He's like that with everything - softness and kindness packaged in strong hands and a broad chest. Copia feels those hands on him now as he inhales, smelling the cool, spicy smell of the salve he's using, made with plants from the greenhouse. His touch is soft and measured as he handles Copia, pressing healing spells into his neck and rubbing the salve into his skin with practiced ease. 

Past the ache in his head, Copia feels the presence of his power - foreign, but not intrusive. The shape of something big passing you in dark water, strange and unknown. 

Aether places both hands at the back of Copia's neck and massages it with his thumbs, eased by the salve, mirrored movement where tension and pain spikes the worst at the base of his skull. A broken sound comes from Copia's mouth at the relief, that caught-breath moment in the sudden absence of pain.

Aether makes a pleased _hmm_ sound and digs his thumb in a little deeper. Copia swallows his next groan, but only barely.

"Your posture is awful, you know," Aether says in gentle admonishment. “If you sat properly in chairs, you’d never have to see me."

"Mmm," Copia says in wordless acknowledgement. _But then I’d never have to see you,_ he thinks. 

He lets his head dip forward as Aether keeps working, his eyes drifting closed. Already, the worst of the pain is burning off like the morning fog in sunshine, as if it was never there. Pain taken away too quickly can leave a gut-punch of an imbalance in its wake. But Aether is methodical and careful, siphoning off pain slowly and steadily. Copia knows, somehow instinctively, that he would never take more than he thought he could handle.

The room is silent except for their breathing and the delicate _clack_ of the glass container as Aether sets it down and wipes his hands clean. 

He cups a firm, warm hand against Copia’s forehead, palm-down, and just like that, the last of the headache drifts away.

“My favorite patient,” Aether says fondly, tucking a strand of hair he'd gotten out of place behind Copia's ear. "You're all set."

Copia catches his hand as he’s pulling back and presses a grateful kiss into the underside of his wrist, warm and soft. He smells the salve on him then, spicy and skin-warmed, almost like perfume.

"Oh," Aether says, all soft and surprised, and Copia thinks his heart could break at that.

 _“Thank you.”_ Copia says more emphatically, pressing another to the smooth center of Aether's palm, like maybe if he does it right he can imprint his words into his body.

Is that how quintessence works? Copia imagines pressing gratitude and warmth into Aether's skin as surely and undeniably as a healing spell. He wonders if it would stay in his body, circulate through him past blood and bone and magic. A part of him, forever. 

Maybe that’s what happens when Aether heals him too.

Aether doesn't move for a moment as Copia pets his palm, brushes his lips against his knuckles. Then he smiles, all shy and pleased, as his other hand settles around Copia's neck, firm and strong as a yoke. His thumb strokes the fine hair at the nape of Copia's neck, and Copia knows right then he's not going to make any of his meetings this morning.

Later, when he has a dozen new bruises stinging sweet and painful over his stomach and thighs, Aether has to heal him all over again.

**Swiss**

“You need a break.”

“Do I look so miserable?” Copia asks, lifting himself from his work. He rolls his neck stiffly. No one told him that his job would come with so much paperwork. The church didn't exactly advertise the administrative work. Marketing found that assorted bacchanalian revelry tended to sell a little better. 

Swiss is sitting backwards in a chair across from him, resting his chin on his crossed arms in feigned innocence. Copia didn't even hear him come in. He raises an eyebrow, managing to convey _I've never seen anyone look so bored,_ and also _I'm up to no good._

“You just look like you could use a distraction,” Swiss says, standing up and plucking the pen from Copia's hand. “Lucky for you, I am very distracting. C'mon." 

Copia spares a glance down at the reports on his desk.

"You can write it off as a team-building expense," Swiss laughs, tugging on Copia's sleeve, bustling him out of the toom. "I'm taking you somewhere."

Copia lets himself be led.

Outside the suffocating walls of the abbey, there’s a hint of summer in the balmy air, perfumed with spring’s last blooms. The walk to wherever Swiss is taking him is warm and buzzy with the sounds of insects and the smell of hot grass. 

Swiss’ hand where it’s pressed against Copia’s is warm, too.

 _Somewhere_ turns out to be a show in an unused ballroom in one of the church's ancillary buildings. The muffled thrum of a bassline and what could be the squeal of a violin greet them in muted tones as they approach, feet crunching in the dry grass.

Copia is hit with a wall of heat and sound as they slip in through the main door together, as real and alive as the room’s occupants. A band of ghouls that Copia's not familiar with command the stage, playing a haunting, lively melody to a crowd of hell’s best castoffs. They’re all dancing and swaying along to some rhythm Copia can’t quite follow, but that feels _right,_ somehow. 

It's not quite choreographed, but it seems like they all know what to do next, when to slide close and when break away. What must it feel like, Copia wonders, to know your place in things so easily. Every move measured, every step following the last. A partner to guide you, a beat to follow. 

Swiss takes his hand again then, inclining his head toward the group. He must sense some hesitation in the way Copia looks back at him, because he gives his hand a tight little squeeze. 

“Don't worry. I'll lead.” he says. Copia watches the dim light sparkle in his dark eyes, and feels a fist close around his heart. 

The dance floor throbs and pulses to the beat. Copia takes in a breath and then releases it, letting the tension of the day roll off his shoulders with any possible protest he could come up with. He smiles. 

“Show me the way.” He says, and then Swiss is tugging him along, and he’s swept up in the crowd.

The other ghouls part for them easily, then slide back in close around them, like there was never any interruption at all. Swiss’ hands find their way to his waist, and all of the sudden he’s right there - one breath away from Copia, so close he can smell the sweet, clean scent of exertion over the more familiar smell of him. Copia lets himself be guided while he finds his rhythm to the strange beat.

The ghouls around them are a wall of moving limbs and swaying tails, cresting and receding like waves. Copia is caught up in it, one endless, unbroken song with Swiss as his guide. He feels outside of himself - like an extension of Swiss’ own body, moving in response, reacting in equal and opposite measure. The push and pull of action and reaction.

In the dim glow of the string lights overhead, Copia _feels_ more than watches Swiss slide his hands around his back, and then his stomach drops as Swiss dips him low. Absurdly, he worries for a moment that he'll end up sprawled on the floor - but no, Swiss is strong and practiced. He doesn't fall, and Swiss’ smile is electric as he tugs him back up, slots him tight against him.

They break away from the group and out the front door, breathless and laughing, their hands still clasped. The late spring air feels almost cool after the hot press of bodies around them. 

Swiss thumps against the wall of the building, breathing hard, smiling like he swallowed the sun. Copia leans next to him with his palm pressed to the cool stone, waiting for his pulse to slow. Swiss’s shirt is stuck to him with sweat, and Copia studies the damp, dark column of his throat as he catches his breath. 

So much of his life is the business of death and misery. Of excess, yes - but also of cavernous absence. The peaks and valleys of a sound wave, discordant and sharp. 

Copia looks at Swiss before him in the twilight and imagines a high, clear note, plucked with careful fingers. 

It's the easiest thing in the world then, to press himself to Swiss, to rest his hands at the narrowest part of his waist - and kiss him softly. Copia can feel Swiss' smile against his mouth as he kisses back, sliding his strong hands around his face, threading fingers through his hair. 

"Yeah?" Swiss asks, his voice warm right below his ear. The plane of his hand is firm on Copia's thigh, its intention unmistakable.

Copia's answering kiss is hard and electric, crushing all of himself against Swiss and getting an answering firm press in response. He thinks about dancing - about how good it felt to have someone guide him, about the joy of simple exertion and movement. 

“Consider me distracted.” Copia says into the warmth of his neck, unable to stop his own smile.

Swiss takes the lead, and Copia follows.

**Dewdrop**

Copia thinks that summer at the abbey has to be worse than hell. 

The church is old and huge, with cavernous foyers and wide, sweeping hallways that stubbornly defy modern retrofitting. Stained glass windows amplify heat like multicolored magnifying glasses. In August, most of the clergy clings to the shadows of the cooler parts of the church, away from the windows and the inescapable heat of the grounds. 

Copia’s quarters - which he had initially been so pleased to see had an eastern view - are unbearable by late morning and take hours to cool back down in the evenings. He takes to avoiding them as much as he can, but you can only stay out of your own room for so long. 

He would ask Cirrus or Cumulus for help, but Nihil and Sister have already earmarked them all summer for rituals. They flank the stage, powerful and graceful as always, pulling air in through the open windows and funneling it through the room in cool channels. They are literal forces of nature, and there’s absolutely no way Copia could ask them to waste their time cooling down his living room. 

He mentions this offhand to the other ghouls one day when he’s fanning himself with a glossy _Baphomet & You_ pamphlet from the recruiting office, the top buttons of his cassock hanging open by necessity, and Dewdrop says, a little too quickly, “I can do that.”

Copia looks up, making sure he heard right. 

“Well, it’s not _exactly_ the same thing,” he corrects, shooting a glance at the ghoulettes with their arms held aloft in the distance, as commanding and powerful as statues. “But - I’ve been practicing in the boiler room, and I can take heat...” A complicated hand gesture then, something pantomiming fire or maybe an explosion. Copia doesn’t quite follow. “...And sort of funnel it through myself, and the air comes out cool.”

Copia studies him carefully, trying to figure out if he’s being had, but his discomfort outweighs his suspicion. 

“Come by my quarters this afternoon and show me,” he says. 

So. Here he is in his study with a fire ghoul as his plus one. Dewdrop is sprawled inelegantly in an armchair he'd dragged over next to him. He’s moving his hands to some unheard rhythm, his face unusually stern in concentration. 

At first, nothing happens. Copia wonders if maybe Dewdrop just wanted an excuse to pester him all afternoon, but then he feels the air around him move, just the suggestion of a breeze. A stronger warm gust of air stirs the paper in front of him, and then - and then, suddenly it’s cool. Mercifully, wonderfully cool.

“Oh,” Copia says in surprise, pleased. 

Dewdrop scoffs at the vote of no confidence. “Ye of little faith.” he says, but there’s a smile in his voice, playful and proud. His sleeves are rolled up, and Copia watches his slender arms move through the air, his fingers tapping out unseen magic. Copia doesn’t think he’s ever seen him concentrate this hard. And it’s nice, he thinks, to be in his presence with no caveats. Just the gentle sound of paper rifling in the breeze and the determined set of Dewdrop’s sharp jaw. 

Copia smiles back and bends over his desk, lost in his work for the time being. It smells like hot grass from the cracked window and the strange, smokey smell Dewdrop always carries with him. It feels like the best parts of summer - an archetypal storybook summer with a seaside town on the cover, he thinks. Languid and comfortable in the respite of your room. How strange and wonderful to get that kind of peace from a fire ghoul.

Later - and it has to be hours later, because the grounds are in shadow from the view outside his window now - Copia surfaces from his work and is surprised to find he suddenly feels warm again. He plucks at the front of his jacket, and glances over at Dewdrop.

Dewdrop is slumped sideways in his chair, dead asleep, his tail curled around himself protectively. Copia’s only seen kits do that before, and his heart does something complicated looking at his soft, unguarded face, the spill of his long silvery hair. Dewdrop’s hands still look posed where his arms lie slack in his lap, like his body just switched off right in the middle of whatever spell he was doing. 

Copia weighs the idea of waking him up in his mind against his own discomfort and finds it unbearable. He quietly takes off his jacket, button by silent button, and slides it over the back of his chair. He returns to the reports in front of him and tries to make the markings resolve into language and numbers, but all he can see when he looks at his desk is Dewdrop’s tightly coiled tail.

A bead of sweat runs down his back, right in between his shoulder blades. His upper lip feels damp. He fingers the highest buttons at the base of his neck for a moment before he admits to himself that he’s going to need to shed another layer if he’s going to get anything else done this evening. 

He’s midway through unbuttoning his shirt when he hears a sleepy wolf whistle next to him. Dewdrop’s propped up on an arm, looking rumpled but mischievous.

“Mmm, I should fall asleep more often if it gets you to take your shirt off,” he says sleepily, stretching like a cat, fine-boned and arching. 

Copia carefully pretends not to notice the creases from the armchair on the side of his face. He looks down at his stack of memos, seeing but not reading. “Late night yesterday?”

“No, um.” Dewdrop says with some hesitation, like he’s measuring out the words before he answers. “The heat transferring. It… may or may not take a little more energy than I was letting on.”

Copia looks up, surprised, suddenly comprehending what the evening had cost Dewdrop.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Copia says, touched. Dewdrop shrugs a single slim shoulder, but the modest effect is offset by the pleased little smile creeping its way onto his face. 

Copia is before him then, kneeling in front of the chair, a gloved hand on his warm knee. "I'm very grateful." he says, and he means it. He can't seem to stop himself from stroking Dewdrop’s silvery hair, smoothing it back from where it still lies in an untidy pile around him. 

He moves to stand up, but then Dewdrop’s tail is sliding up his leg like a creeping vine. The spade tip of it bumps his belt buckle, as subtle as an anvil. 

“Wanna show me how much?” Dewdrop says, demurely resting his chin on his fist. 

Copia fights a smile and loses, trying not to be charmed in spite of himself. He's never been very good at saying no to Dewdrop. He slides back down to the floor.

Dewdrop’s skin is hot to the touch, even through the leather of Copia's gloves. Later, he finds his mouth is even hotter. 

Maybe hell isn’t so bad if this is the company you get to keep. 

**Everyone**

They come to him like this, sometimes. 

There are warm lips on his neck, against the softest part of his thighs, right above his groin. Too many hands to count roaming his chest and his legs. Someone kisses him, and it has to be Dewdrop - it’s too hot to be anyone else. He groans into his mouth as someone slides a tight hand around him.

It feels rough, calloused. Maybe Mountain, maybe Swiss - it's hard to tell. Someone else puts their mouth there, wet and warm.

 _"Ghouls,"_ he moans, feeling himself try to move, to touch back, but he's pinned - his arms are pressed to the bed above his head, and he feels Aether's tight grip pressing his hands together. Graceful, firm hands hold his legs apart, and it feels like Rain, keeping him prone and open.

He's a breath away from coming.

Their bodies are a chorus above him, touching and stroking, and he feels their unspoken words through their touch - their love, their friendship, the strange combination of possessor and possessed. 

They're as much his as he is theirs.

He thinks he finally understands what it must feel like to be connected to the earth, to the elements - to be a small part of something arcane and much larger than yourself. 

When he comes, he can't tell where they end and he begins.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3 comments always appreciated! :)
> 
> on tumblr @ ratballet


End file.
